Path integrals and the essential self-adjointness of differential operators on noncompact manifolds (Q379187)

The present article deals with the problem of essential self-adjointness of second order differential operators on Hilbert space occurring in quantum mechanics, known as Schrödinger operators with certain locally square integrable potentials. The class of potentials considered here includes the negative Coulomb potential. In [Bull. Am. Math. Soc., New Ser. 7, 447--526 (1982; Zbl 0524.35002)], \textit{B. Simon} already proved the essential self-adjointness under certain conditions when the configuration space is Euclidean and constructed what he called Schrödinger semigoups. The present authors now formulate the following question: ``To what extent can Simon's result be extended to Schrödinger type operators acting on sections in vector bundles over possibly non-compact Riemannian manifolds?'' To get an answer, they use path integral methods, assuming that the smooth connected Riemannian manifold is geodesically complete and has no boundary. The main result is stated in a theorem. Here, the potential consists of a positive and a negative part. When the negative part is of Kato type, then the closure of the Schrödinger operator is semibounded from below.